String Boys, page 20
He was planning to move in with a murderer.
But every time that word hit his brain, his brain zigged and zagged the other way.
Not his boy. Not his Seth. It wasn’t murder if it was self-defense, was it? Seth hadn’t walked away from whatever had happened unscathed. He’d been held down, beaten, just like Kelly had.
Two things going on at that crime scene.
And more than that.
Kelly found he possessed a singular selfishness about Seth.
Didn’t Kelly get anything that was his?
This boy, this young man, took care of him. In almost two years of cuddling, kissing, walks on the beach—yes, they had made it to the beach—Seth had only touched him intimately once, because Kelly had initiated it and invited it and was comfortable.
Two years, and Seth had marched at Kelly’s speed—slower than a glacier. Slower than history. Slower than a constipated dinosaur—and hadn’t complained once.
“Seth?” Kelly asked now, rolling over and splaying his hand over Seth’s stomach under his shirt.
“Yeah?”
“Are we ever gonna—” He couldn’t say have sex. It didn’t sound right. Not after the last two years. “—make love again?”
To his surprise, Seth looked away, biting his lip in a way that made Kelly think of the dorky little laughs he let out sometimes, when he wasn’t expecting to be amused.
“I… I had this plan, see?” Seth said. “And it’s dumb. Because… because you haven’t said anything, but… but I think… see, I think you want to stay and do junior college for two more years.”
Kelly gasped, sitting up in bed. “How did…?” He swallowed, suddenly tearful. “You wanted to move out—”
“I do,” Seth told him, and his eyes were red and shiny. “I do. But… but, Kelly, you’re not ready. I… I get it. I mean, it hurts.” He grimaced. “I can’t pretend. Anyway. So I’ve got this dream, you know? Like, you turn eighteen, and I know it’s dumb, but for some reason eighteen is a big age. It’s like you’re free to consent, you know? I’m sorry. I’m saying this wrong. But… but I want to take you somewhere. Somewhere nice. Like… like remember when me and Vince and Amara went to Monterey last summer?”
Kelly nodded. Seth hadn’t wanted to go, but Amara’s parents had rented a house for a week, and she’d invited her best friends—which were apparently both boys—and Seth had sent Kelly pictures every day.
Kelly, who had only made it to the beach at San Francisco, had looked at the bright clear expanses of Monterey Bay and fallen in love.
“I wanted to do that. With you. I wanted to rent a house. Like, I’ve started saving money for it. And, like, my dad could come for the last couple of days, but before that, it would be, like, just you and me. Just… just us. And we could… we could have space. And privacy. It wouldn’t have to be rushed. And you’d never have to feel trapped. If it didn’t work out, we could go running on the beach and maybe swimming because sometimes it’s warm enough and nobody would know or care, and we could try again.”
Kelly gaped at him, unaware that he was crying until he wiped his mouth and his hand came away briny. “This? This is what goes running through your head when I think it’s only music?”
Seth looked away. “Yeah.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
“We could do that?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a real pretty picture,” he said, before he started to sob in earnest. “I want that. Can we do that?”
Seth’s arms, warm and kind, were all he’d ever wanted. That word, that terrible word that went with Castor Durant and that terrible time, that word could go to hell.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s do that. You’re right. I… I can’t leave my family, not right now. But let’s do that.”
“Okay. Let’s do that.”
And Kelly couldn’t talk after that. He was too busy crying, and he couldn’t even say why.
HE’D PULLED himself together by the time Amara and Vince got back, and the weekend, well, it didn’t get much better than that. Sunday morning, his dad texted and said he’d be there around six o’clock to pick him up, so they braved the hour on the bus to the beach and got back, breathless and happy, at six thirty.
Kelly was surprised his dad wasn’t there yet. He and Seth sat on the steps leading up to the boys’ dorms, looking out at the grounds—pretty, green, parklike—and talked after their return.
Darkness fell, and Kelly looked at his phone uncomfortably.
“Do you think he got held up in traffic?” he asked. He didn’t even want to try calling. His dad had never mastered the art of Bluetooth phones in the minivan.
“Here,” Seth said, pulling out his own phone. “Let me call my….”
At that moment, Craig Arnold pulled up in the Cadillac, the often refurbished, constantly cosseted red Cadillac that he swore he’d never part with.
He came to a slow stop and got out of the car, looking at both boys unhappily.
“Dad?”
Seth’s dad came around to them and held out his arms, and as they both went in for the hug, Kelly saw his face, rumpled and swollen, eyes red like blood.
“Mr. Arnold?”
“Seth?” he said quietly. “I need you to go pack for at least two weeks. I’ll come in and sign you out in a few. Can you do that?”
And Seth—he didn’t say, “But I have a performance in a week.” He didn’t say, “No! Tell me now!” He just went, squeezing Kelly’s shoulder like he knew what was coming.
Kelly couldn’t fathom what was coming. “Mr. Arnold?”
“Kelly, your dad and brother were in an accident this morning. They weren’t coming here. I thought you should know that. I guess… I guess they got in a fight, and Matty was driving, and he wrecked the car.”
“My brother—”
“Matty’s okay,” Mr. Arnold said, and Kelly heard it then. The terrible pause.
“No.” Oh God. No.
“I’m sorry, son.”
“No.”
“I’m so sorry. It happened on impact.”
“No no no no no….”
And Seth’s dad held him forever and ever after that. Even after Seth came out, his few possessions in his arms, and took over, Kelly could hear his own wail in his ears, in his head, in his heart, for years and years.
“Daddy, no!”
Songs from Outer Space
THERE WAS nothing Seth could do.
Nothing.
He held Kelly in the back of the car all the way to Sacramento, while Kelly whimpered because he couldn’t sob anymore.
When they got to the hospital, Kelly’s mom was in one of the many family rooms in the ICU unit at Kaiser, and so were his little sisters. Lulu was asleep, iron-straight black hair in stunning disarray, Chloe cradled in her arms.
Oh. Yes. Seth could see it—the thinness in the baby’s limbs, the convulsive way she clutched at Lulu’s shirt.
Kelly was right to worry about this baby.
But now was not the time.
Linda pulled her son into a long, intense hug, and while she was doing that, Seth and his father had a short conference.
“I’ll take the girls home,” he said. “Do you want to stay here with Kelly or come help with the girls?”
“Wherever he needs me,” Seth said on automatic, but that got to be trickier as the week went on.
That night he stayed in the hospital, sometimes holding Kelly’s hand and sometimes holding Chloe because Linda kept expecting Isela to show up to take care of her daughter.
“I don’t know what she’s doing,” Linda muttered. “I—your husband is in the ICU, how do you not show up?” She shook her head. “I….” And for the first time, Seth saw her broken. “I can’t. I can’t go see him. I’m so damned mad. Oh God, Kelly, I’m so mad at him. He took your daddy from me, and I….”
And she and Kelly were clutching each other, crying, and Seth was standing, helpless, Matty’s daughter in his arms.
After a moment, an attendant stepped into the room. “Family of Mateo Cruz?”
Linda gave a bitter nod, not letting go of Kelly’s hand. “We’re moving him from ICU to recovery. He’s been asking for family. Did somebody want to go see him?”
Watching Linda and Kelly stand up, hand in hand, faces grim as they struggled with themselves not to reject Matty completely, Seth got a glimpse into the alien world of true family.
Not even Matty would get denied now.
That was forgiveness.
It was a lesson Seth took to heart.
They started toward the recovery unit, and Seth gathered all of Chloe’s stuff, the baby still asleep on his shoulder. The attendant—Nurse Osborne—stopped him. “Are you family?”
“Friend,” he said. “This is his daughter.”
“Do you know where the mother is?”
Seth shook his head. “No. I guess Matty’s mom tried to reach her, but no dice.”
Nurse Osborne was an older woman, with close-cropped gray ringlets and skin a weathered oak. “What do you know about that child’s home life?”
Uh-oh. “I… I’m not around,” he said, feeling like a heel. “Kelly comes to visit me, and he… you know. Tells me about his sisters and Chloe. I guess he and his mom watch her a lot.”
Nurse Osborne nodded. “Mm-hm. Are they a good home?”
Seth frowned. “They’re the best,” he said staunchly. “They kept me safe when I wasn’t at home. His parents are….” Oh God. He couldn’t help it. “His mom is the best,” he said, voice breaking. “His dad was…. Oh God. I’m gonna miss him.” He started wiping his face with the back of his hand, baby still rocking against his shoulder, but Nurse Osborne pulled out a tissue.
“I can’t get any better recommendation than that. Okay, sweetheart. I’ll let you go visit your friend in a minute—”
“He’s not my friend,” Seth felt compelled to say. “Not anymore. Not after his brother and I started dating.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Well, I’m not surprised. That one—he’s got an attitude. And that’s not his only problem.”
Seth stared at her, and she just nodded him toward the thick metal unit doors, which were standing open from when Linda and Kelly had gone.
Seth made it through, car seat dangling, baby bag over one shoulder, Chloe drooling on the other. And unlike when Kelly had been in recovery, his stomach ached with wrongness.
I shouldn’t be here.
He could hear Matty before he even got to the room.
“I just want some fucking painkillers! Is that so wrong! I’ve been in an accident, dammit!”
“Yeah, Matty,” Linda snarled. “We know. You know why you got in an accident? Because you were fucking high, you asshole! You let your father get into the passenger seat with you—nice father-son chat, he thought, right? And you were high. That’s why no painkillers. That’s what the nurse told me. They’re not sure they can give you anything because you might overdose. Do you get that? You are that fucked-up.”
His mother’s voice hit high C, and Chloe choked and woke up.
“Is that my baby?” Not screaming, Seth could hear the slur in Matty’s voice. “Bring my baby here! Chloe, baby—”
Seth froze in the doorway, paralyzed.
“Oh my God—Mom. You let him hold my baby? Him? Jesus, that guy’s a fucking psycho—he should be in a fucking cage!”
And there, in the white-tiled corridor of the hospital, Seth felt as exposed as a fly pinned to a cork board.
“You shut up,” Kelly hissed. “You shut up. The only one who believes that is you. Dad loved him. Dad wanted him to be part of our family. He’d rather drive me down to fucking Bridgford any day of the week than listen to your drugged-out bullshit, so not another fucking word—”
“Yeah, you keep lecturing me, little brother. That psycho’s got you by the cock—”
Kelly and Linda both exited the room, slamming the sliding glass door behind them with unnecessary force.
“I’m sorry,” Seth muttered, under Chloe’s crying. “Here. I’ll take her to the waiting room. I’m sorry. I should never have come. I’m sorry.”
Chloe, who had fallen in love with Seth at first sight—Seth thought it was his deep voice—gave a tiny hiccup and settled, whimpering, clutching his sweatshirt in her tiny fists.
She was eight months old?
“Agnes was bigger than this,” Seth said into the sudden silence. “And not as scared. Poor baby. What’s so scary about the world?”
“Matty!”
Linda and Kelly both straightened when they heard the voice, and Linda grabbed Kelly by the hand and ushered Seth to the other end of the unit. “Come on,” she told them. “There’s doors at the other end. Hurry!”
By the time they rounded the corner out of sight, they could hear Isela, a full panicked cry, her father trying to calm her down.
She screamed at Matty like he was getting sucked down in a flood.
As Seth and Linda and Kelly made their exit—closely pursued by Nurse Osborne, Seth noticed—he had a moment to think that both of them had already been swept away.
NURSE OSBORNE led them back down a couple of corridors to a quiet waiting room that was hard to spot from the main corridor and told them to stay. She came back shortly with a harried-looking white woman in her early thirties, wearing jeans and a T-shirt and a fuzzy brown ponytail, and a rather severe-looking doctor, his East Indian features lean and narrow, his eyes flinty with condemnation.
“Your son is a drug addict,” the man—Doctor Takeri, his name badge proclaimed—said. “His blood work came back with high concentrations of opioids. We told you this.”
Linda nodded.
“We notified the police, but the fact is, your son went off the road and hit a tree. There was minimal property damage, and only the car’s occupants were injured. He’ll be charged with driving while impaired at the very least, and you will need to get a lawyer in order to keep him out of jail.”
Linda gasped. “Police? Why has nobody—”
“Because we were waiting for the blood work, you understand? Now about the child—”
“The child lives with her parents right now, is that correct?” The social worker stepped forward. Trisha Alford. She probably had a lovely family, but Seth clutched Chloe closer to his chest.
“Yes,” Linda said, sounding dazed. “Her mother leaves her with us a lot.”
“Does she work outside the home?”
Linda and Kelly exchanged looks, and they both shook their heads.
“She says Matty should provide.” Linda’s weariness was palpable.
“Mrs. Cruz, I know this is hard to hear, but that child can’t go home until we’ve checked the home out for drugs and drug use. And I’ve got to tell you, hearing that girl screeching away, I’m not really hopeful that we won’t find it in both parents. Are you prepared to take care of that little girl?”
Linda nodded. Without hesitation, she nodded. Seth swallowed and clutched Chloe a little tighter. This baby needed Kelly’s mom right now. Kelly needed his mom right now.
Nobody needed him.
In fact, he might be the biggest danger to the Cruz family, next to Matty’s drug use.
Ms. Alford’s next words confirmed it.
“We’ll need to check out your house,” she said. “She’ll need a space for a crib, even if it’s in an adult’s room—”
“Will my son Kelly’s room be okay?”
And for the first time in forever, Kelly and Seth met eyes. “Poor Agnes,” Seth mouthed, and Kelly smiled.
It was small and strained, but Seth could do that much, at least.
“There’s room for a crib and a changing table?”
“Yes,” Kelly said decisively, his eyes never leaving Seth’s. Seth knew. They both knew what this meant. It meant that Kelly wasn’t just staying home for junior college. It meant he was staying home until Lily and Lulu got old enough to help in the same way Kelly could. It meant he was home until Agnes left for college, and that he’d be helping his mother with the rent for years to come.
It meant that their amorphous time in the future, that had seemed so close, had just become a world away. It had dropped off the horizon. The curve of the earth obstructed its existence entirely.
And it also meant that Seth was going to have to make himself scarce. Chloe was being taken from her parents. One word—one breath—about Seth being involved with Castor Durant’s death, and she’d be taken from Kelly’s family as well.
Seth’s eyes burned, and he clutched Chloe a little closer, even as she threatened to rip them both apart.
Kelly’s lips moved, a message meant just for Seth. I’m sorry.
Seth returned with a small watery smile. I still love you.
Kelly nodded and wiped his eyes with the inside of his shirt. Seth almost missed it then, but Kelly shook his head and pulled Seth’s attention back to his face. Forever. I promise.
And then everybody was listening to the doctor who’d seen too much and the social worker who felt like she could do too little. Chloe fell completely asleep, and Seth set her inside her car carrier and buckled her up.
He pulled Kelly aside for a moment as the doctor was explaining the hospital’s policy on admitting patients into their rehabilitation center and how Matty would be eligible for fifty-six days on his insurance from work, but after that, he would be asked to pay for it or be transferred to a state-run facility.
Seth wasn’t sure how Linda and Kelly could keep all the details straight.
“I’ll take a Lyft back to the apartment,” he said quietly. “Do you want me to take her with me, or should you and your mom keep her from here on out?”
Kelly slumped forward. “You have to go?” he asked plaintively.
“What if Matty sees me again?” Seth explained, hating that he had to. “Chloe needs you guys, Kelly. They’ll take her away if he starts screaming about… things.”
“And you could be locked in a cage,” Kelly muttered. “Don’t forget that!”
